(art, crafts, and bookmaking for kids based on a century of art genres and movements--from Jackson Pollock splatter painting to installation art!)

• This June and July, we'll hang out at the umbrella tree at Green Bean Books (or inside if it's raining) to explore six art making trends of modern and contemporary art history and give them all a try. Each class will involve painting, collage, sculpture, or installation experiments as well as a book form to take home that makes use of these materials and methods.

• Class take place every Wednesday from June 15-July 20, 1:30-2:30 p.m. (we may sometimes run closer to an hour and 15 minutes if we're having a lot of fun!) $10.00/child/class; siblings $8.00. A portion of each fee goes towards super cool materials and supplies for everyone to make take-home projects.

• Signed up for the first 5? get the 6th for a dollar. Ages 5 to 11 welcome. Try one or all six!

Our Schedule:

June 15: Surrealism and the Exquisite Corpse: A lesson in art as a social experience, the Exquisite Corpsewas a game the Surrealist artists like Joan Miró and Simon Callinet would play. One artist would start a drawing, then give it to another artist to add on an element. This process was repeated until someone decided the drawing was done! The artists tried to make them as strange and whimsical as possible. We'll make Exquisite Corpse Books--each page will contain different heads and tails that can be mixed and matched and make for some funny monsters. Each of our books will be unique, with the wonderful work of our fellow classmates in it, as well.

June 22: Dadaism: Dadaism, or simply Dada, is a a type of art characterized by found objects. Sometimes it involves actual 3-D objects put together in a certain way (assemblage), or cut-outs from magazines and newspapers (collage). Today we'll make book with thick assemblage covers and pages that are created with collaged images and texts.

June 29: Sculptures and Mobiles: Today we'll make hanging sculptures and mobiles out of recycled book pages, an homage to Alexander Calder who first coined the term "mobile" for his hanging sculptures in the 1930s.

July 6 Action Painting: Loosen up! We'll paint like Jackson Pollock with splatters, large strokes, marbles, and other elements of chance that make this artistic movement unique. We'll turn one of our works of art into a Meander Book, a book structure that mimics the randomness of action painting with a series of cuts and folds that leave us with a sculptural book that we couldn't have possibly planned out ahead of time.

July 13: Pop Art: Using Andy Warhol as our inspiration, we'll use printmaking techniques to recreate an every day object over and over, then paint and embellish our prints to make each different in some way. The images will be bound into an accordion book structure.

July 20: Installation Art: Together, we'll look at fanciful work from contemporary installation artists, like Christo and Jean-Claude. We'll talk about public art, and create a book-based installation of our own that will remain for a short period of time at Green Bean Books--either inside or our on the patio area. We will brainstorm, sketch, create, and install the work together. The process and our final installation will be photographed and made into a pamphlet "exhibition catalogue" for each child to pick up at a later date!